Comparing Functionality in Video Services on iPad vs Android Tablets

Our research suggests that video services on iPad are more evolved than on Android tablets.

Kauser Kanji25 Feb 2013

Last week I posted some data here on VOD Professional about the
common functionality found
in video services on iPad. This answered questions
like "How many video services use content recommendation?", "How
important are personalization features?" and "What functionality
should I include in my organisation's new iPad video service?"

We took those figures from our VUI Library research tool which
is a global study of over 180 different video services across
platforms. So far, we've taken over 5,500 screenshots of video user
interfaces (VUIs) and scored those products by the presence (or
lack of presence) of 25 common functions that seem to appear again
and again in video services all over the world.

Today, I'm going to share some of our Android tablet findings.
As with our earlier article about iPad functionality, these numbers
are taken from analyses we did last year. To get the most up to
date data - and find out what the most recent developments are in
building video services for Android tablets - you may like to
consider subscribing to the VUI
Library.

Functionality found in Video Services on Android
Tablets

So how often do those 25 most common functions appear in VUIs on
Android tablets and how does this compare to video services on
iPad? You can see the full deck below - plus a bar chart comparing
the two sets of devices - but here are some highlights:

Overall, it seems that video services on Android tablets are
less evolved than those found on iPad. For example, looking at
content discovery and recommendation, in iPad, "Featured Content"
areas are found in 98% of services. On Android, the figure drops
down to 75%. Content Categorisation is found in 92% of services on
iPad but only 80% on Android. 'Search' is 61% vs. 52%, 'Recently
Added' is 75% vs. 55% and A-Z (of content) functionality is 31% vs.
8%. These are really interesting findings and suggest that most
broadcasters and content owners think that iPad is still more
important to viewers than Android tablets. As a small aside, the
research firm IDC
recently reported that tablet sales for 2012 were 78.4% higher than
2011 and, in total, 128m devices were sold.

It's a similar story for Personalization features. iPad video
services are more likely to include Favourites, Playlists and
Parental Controls than Android tablet equivalents. The only measure
in which Android tablets fare better is 'Social Sign-on' - the
ability to use a Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn account to sign in
to a video service.

Indeed, only four of our 25 common functions appear more on
Android tablets than iPad: 'Most Popular' content areas, 'Social
Sign-on'; the ability to create video Playlists and customization
of the actual video player.

Support functionality is lacking on Android tablet video
services. Help, About and Contact features are found in more than
two-thirds of iPad services but only in just over a third of
Android. Accessibility (using subtitles, closed captions etc.)
which was already only intermittently available on iPad (22%) is
even worse on Android (11%).

As before, I should say that this is quantitative research but
we'll be adding qualitative elements soon. In other words, we'll be
asking consumers exactly what they think of these different
functions, how often they use them and how important they think
they are.